January 14: Sustained!
January 14
Cast your burden on the Lord, and He shall sustain you; He shall never permit the righteous to be moved. -Psalm 55:22
Today's devotion is sponsored by two simple syllables: sun-tain. It's a word that means "to support, to hold, to bear up from beneath, to bear the weight of." Nehemiah 9:21 says about the Israelites, "Forty years you sustained them in the wilderness; they lacked nothing." The psalmist says, "I lay down and slept; I awoke, for the Lord sustained me" (Psalm 3:5). David promises that God will sustain the generous person even on a bed of sickness (41:3).
Isaiah 46:4 says, "Even to your old age and gray hairs... I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you" (NIV).
Like the Giant pillars of an unshakable bridge, the promises of God bear us up from beneath. His everlasting arms sustain us through every storm. A hymn by Anne Steele provides a good prayer for today: "My great protector, and my Lord, Thy constant aid impart; O let Thy kind, thy gracious word sustain my trembling heart."
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Under every condition, invert circumstance, for every burden, in every need, through every sorrow, Christ, the source and sustainer of life is more than sufficient." - A.L. Faust
*"the Origin of Life-Science and Faith," The Methodist Review, no. 95 (January, 1913): 134.
